The Atomic Sea: Volume Two

by Jack Conner

  THE ATOMIC SEA:

  VOLUME TWO

  by Jack Conner

  Copyright 2014

  All rights reserved

  Cover image used with permission

  AUTHOR’S NOTE:

  In order to keep the price of The Atomic Sea: Part One at a permanent discount, The Atomic Sea series has been rearranged, so if you read the original version of The Atomic Sea: Part One you may have already read this volume, as the original massive volume has been split into two still-considerable volumes. If that’s the case, not to worry, just skip to Part Three (or whichever volume you haven’t read yet). For a fuller explanation of why this was done, check out my website: http://jackconnerbooks.com

  To join my newsletter and stay up to date on my writings, including issues like this (and to access my Starter Library—four whole Jack Conner books!—for FREE, go here: http://jackconnerbooks.com/newsletter/

  The World of the Atomic Sea

  For a larger version of the map, go to:

  http://jackconnerbooks.com/map-of-the-world-of-the-atomic-sea/

  Chapter 1

  A ray glided to the west.

  Avery sat in the ruined tower of some ancient fortress smoking one of the last cigarettes side by side with Hildra, also smoking. In companionable silence, they shared a flask containing the last whiskey and stared at the sky, where to the west floated the great shape of the ray, visible mainly as a blackness against the low-lying clouds. To the north floated another.

  “Think they can sense her?” Hildra asked. “Your mermaid?” Her monkey Hildebrand perched low and apprehensive on her shoulder, staring in the direction of the nearest ray. He had a nut halfway to his mouth but was too distracted to eat it.

  Avery sipped from the flask and grimaced. “They must. She’s drawing them closer and closer. It’s only a matter of time before they come on us.”

  She accepted the flask back, took a swig. “Then what? We’re screwed?’

  He took a drag on his cigarette. He didn’t smoke often and found it harsher than he would have cared for. Nevertheless he enjoyed the pleasant lift it brought to his mind. “Layanna says she thinks she can counter whatever psychic blasts the rays might hurl at her. But even without the psychics, the soldiers on the rays have weapons that can hurt her, even kill her, like Sheridan did.”

  “I’m more worried about us.”

  “They can kill us, too, of course.”

  Hildra rolled her eyes.

  “You wouldn’t like to see the war ended?” he asked.

  She expelled a column of smoke at the sky. “Sure. Why not? I’m in. But if it comes down to it, a choice between us or her, no offense, bones, but I’m sidin’ with the humans. She won’t even tell us what she is or where we’re going.” She took a long pull on the flask, made a face. “How can we trust someone like that?”

  “She’s told us she’s one of the Collossum, and she did save our lives.”

  “She needs us, that’s all. And don’t forget about Jay and Hold.”

  “I won’t.” He touched his arm gingerly, though it had healed.

  She nodded, accepting this. “I know, bones. But ... shit, I saw Jay’s brains explode out the back of his fucking head.” She blinked as if to get the memory out of her mind.

  “For what it’s worth, I think Layanna feels badly about their deaths.”

  “How can you tell? She’s so ... cold.”

  Avery had noticed that, too. “She needs to be. She can’t afford to get attached to us. She can’t allow herself to hesitate if it comes time to sacrifice one of us. Not unlike what you were just saying about her, I might add.”

  Hildra sighed and slumped against the wall. “I don’t like this, Doc. This is out of my normal line, if y’know what I mean. I guess I’ve helped out a few fugitives, but ... fucking rays? You’ve gotta be kidding me.” Her eyes flicked to the horizon, where a ray was just sweeping before a snow-capped mountain peak. The creature’s wings flapped once, slowly, with a crack of rolling thunder, and its spiny tail dipped up and down. That was all. Except for those small movements, it might as well have been a statue, vast and black and merciless.

  “We’ll make it,” Avery said with more assurance than he felt.

  “Pardon me for sayin’, bones, but you’re full of shit.”

  “You’re not the first person to say so.” Taking the flask back, he sipped, then sucked a drag off his cigarette. He let the smoke play in his mouth, mix with the taste of cheap alcohol. “We’ll make it.”

  He glanced at the ruined fortress around them. It was huge and sprawling, with a dozen great towers lancing the heavens, all capped white with snow. Most were broken, their tops missing, even snapped off halfway through, and their remains lay at the towers’ bases, huge mounds of snow-covered rubble. From time to time a cloud of batkin would shiver from the inside of one of the towers and sweep off into the night, or return to their roost gorged and full and dripping.

  Down below in one of the frost-covered courtyards Janx strolled, unlit cigar clenched in his jaws. Layanna was resting in the ruins of the keep, where presumably Muirblaag and Byron rested, too. Over the past few days, Avery had learned that Byron was an accomplished singer, and when the band judged the night to be safe, he would entertain them with songs of adventure, gilded cities and tragic romance. For someone who despised history so much, he certainly could make it exciting.

  Hildra touched Avery’s arm suddenly and pointed out at the night.

  A ray drifted closer, its huge broad head aimed in their direction.

  Perhaps afraid, Hildra pressed against his side, and he could smell her, a mix of spice and musk, whisky and cigarettes. He was grateful for the contact, and the warmth, for he felt suddenly cold.

  “Maybe we should get goin’,” she said.

  “Leave Maar Keep?”

  It was a private joke between the two of them. They had decided amongst themselves that this must be the infamous fortress of Count Hyssmyr, who had held Prince Cort prisoner for years and finally walled him up in the catacombs only for the prince to escape, rescue Princess Syra and flee into the mountains, there to engage upon the epic adventures which had made them immortal and, if legend held true, had ended the War of the Severance.

  Hildra did not smile. “I mean it, bones. That fucker’s comin’ straight at us.”

  Avery frowned, studying the ray. It was not actually coming directly at them, he saw, but at a slight angle. Its psychic pilot must sense Layanna’s general direction. If he came close enough ...

  “You may be right,” Avery said. Snow settled on his hair and mustache and began to melt. He drew his jacket tighter about him.

  “It’s coming from the east,” she said. “If we leave here and bear north I bet we miss—”

  A scream rang out. A long, terrified scream.

  Then another, and another.

  Avery and Hildra stared at each other. As one, they ran down the stairs.

  * * *

  Hildebrand chittered in fright as they reached the courtyard and bounded across it.

  Janx was already moving, rushing around a blasted statue toward the mass of the keep that reared above them, its roofs and gables crusted with age and snow. Fierce gargoyles with bloodstone eyes glared down at them, some with horns or tongues missing, some with lichenous growths jutting obscenely from them, making them look eerie and monstrous.

  Janx reached the great archway, where hundreds of years ago a thick metal-banded wooden door would have hung but was long gone, and vanished inside.

  Heart pounding, Avery followed.

  It was cold but dry inside, and the wind blew weakly. Ice-slicked stone pressed down on him, inset torch sconces a mockery of warmth and light f
rom a distant age. A small light flickered ahead, around a bend in the tunnel. A candle hunched at the base of a set of winding, age-bowed stairs. Janx leapt up them, two at a time. Avery came after, not as adroitly, breathing fast and shallow. Screams echoed off the walls.

  They passed down another hall, with the roof missing above and snow fluttering down, then another, this one with roof intact. Lights flickered from a room ahead, making shadows dance across the corridor walls.

  Avery, hard on Janx’s heels, burst into the chamber, what must have been some concubine’s bedchamber at some point long ago, or even a holding cell. Legend held that Princess Syra had been locked away in the highest tower, but who really knew? She might have been locked in this very room, if she had ever existed at all.

  Layanna, Muirblaag and Byron had laid out sleeping blankets on the cold stone, but they weren’t asleep at the moment. Muirblaag and Byron struggled under netting that had been thrown over them, while Layanna occupied the center of the room, arms flung back, head uplifted, floating amidst the substances of her otherworldly amoeba-self. Pink-tinged tentacles and flagella wriggled from bulging pseudopods, and strange lights shone from the amoeba’s interior.

  Gripped in these tentacles were half a dozen ngvandi. It was the ngvandi who screamed so hideously. They writhed and twisted in the grip of the stinging, electric tendrils, convulsing and shuddering. As Avery watched, Layanna drew one of the creatures inside the amoebic wall, causing the surface of the material to ripple as the ngvandi was engulfed. Her organelles bunched aside, and the otherworldly acids began eating at it. Skin peeled from muscle, muscle dissolved against bone. The ngvandi screamed soundlessly as its eyes boiled away and streamers of flesh floated about its head.

  The other ngvandi howled and twisted, but soon enough they went limp in Layanna’s embrace, and she laid them almost tenderly on the floor. Smoke trailed up from two of the corpses, while others appeared chemically burned.

  “Shit,” Janx said, sounding stunned. He shook his head and crossed to Muirblaag and Byron, helping them out of the nets. “What happened?”

  Muirblaag struggled from the netting, winded and out of breath. “Fuckin’ bastards ... just pounced on us.”

  Avery studied one smoking body. It could have been a brother to Muirblaag, though it was not quite so tall and muscular. Another of the corpses had yellow-and-red fish scales, and another green.

  Layanna still floated, encased in her amoeba sac. The fluids of the ngvandi she’d drawn into herself swirled around organelles and ... into them. She’s feeding, Avery realized. Gooseflesh crept up his arms. Of course, it made sense. The ngvandi would have the same extradimensional elements as anything from the Atomic Sea.

  “I think we’d better go,” Avery said.

  “Fuckin’ aye,” Byron said, dusting himself off. “I’ve had it here.”

  “Hildra and I saw a ray coming this way.”

  “We don’t need any rays,” Janx agreed. “And fuck knows if the mutes’ll be back.”

  Muirblaag looked bleak. “They will. This is what they do when they find travelers in the mountains. They send in a stealth party to steal the women to breed with, then the real attack comes.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Avery said. “They made no move against Hildra.” He turned to her.

  Or where she should have been. She had been right on his heels.

  There was no one there.

  “I ...” He felt weak all of a sudden. The ngvandi had taken her, quietly and with ease, right from under his nose, and he hadn’t noticed a thing.

  “Damn.” This was Byron. He blinked and began to pack his things.

  Janx turned hard eyes on Muirblaag. “What’ll they do with her?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Gods damn!” Janx kicked over one of the lamps, which broke into pieces. “We have to get her back.”

  “Agreed,” Muirblaag said.

  Byron wiped a hand down his pale, sweaty face. “Shit, guys, you really wanna ... ? I mean ...” They stared at him mercilessly, and he sagged. “Shit.”

  Avery heard a sound in the distance, faint but audible. “I don’t think so,” he said.

  “Hells with that,” Janx said. “We’re goin’ after her.”

  “I meant I don’t think we’ll get the chance. They take the women first, then massacre the men. By now they will have figured out one of their kidnapping parties hasn’t returned, and—”

  Avery heard more distinctly what he’d detected a minute before. There came the scuffings of feet on stone, of powerful bodies propelling themselves down cold halls. Something hooted. Something shrieked.

  They were very close.

  Avery reached down and wrestled a metal trident out of the hands of one of the smoking ngvandi. The weapon was cold and heavy and charred. He stared at it in wonder. Am I really doing this?

  “Shit,” said Janx, drawing his pistol.

  Muirblaag claimed another trident. “Guess I always knew it would come down to this.”

  Byron looked as if he wanted to weep. Then his eyes settled on Layanna. “She’ll save us.”

  Layanna remained entranced in her ethereal substances. As Avery watched, she seemed to float higher off the ground, and her amoeba sac swelled. Strange lights filled the gelatinous substances inside. There was little left of the victimized ngvandi now, just bones. Even those were dissolving. Avery knew it hadn’t been the creature’s flesh that she had truly craved, however, but the energies within it, or fused with it on some other plane.

  “They may not kill us,” Muirblaag offered. “They may just make us wish they had.”

  “Sell it dearly.” This was Janx’s advice.

  The hooting and gibbering drew closer, and the scuff of feet and claws on stone.

  Sweat beaded Avery’s brow. Cornered, he thought. Mari, Ani, I’ll be with you soon. Squaring his shoulders, he backed away from the doorway that had no door and joined the others as they formed a semi-circle facing the entrance. Layanna occupied the center, swollen, majestic and terrible.

  Visibly shaking, Byron drew out his knife. “Fuck me.”

  Something hooted in the hallway beyond. The ngvandi had found the right floor.

  Avery raised his trident. It was a fitting room to die in, he thought. The room that Princess Syra herself may have been a captive in.

  The ngvandi came closer.

  He blinked.

  A howl sent shivers down his spine.

  No, of course not. Foolish ...

  The ngvandi screamed in bloodlust. They had almost reached the room.

  But maybe ...

  Shuffling, scraping. Very near.

  Maybe ...

  Holding his breath, Avery swiveled his head. His eyes scanned the room. It can’t be, he thought. Surely.

  A horrible screech shook the room.

  He quit the line of defenders and marched toward the far wall. All the stories agreed that it had been through the wall opposite the doorway that Prince Cort had come. It was always important because he’d been within sight of the door. Even as he’d spirited Princess Syra through the secret entrance, someone had opened the main door, spotted them and raised the alarm. The breathless escape that followed, including the masquerade, was one of the highlights of the tale, no matter which version.

  Avery probed the wall.

  “What the hell you doin’?” Janx said. “Get your ass back here!”

  Avery threw down his trident and studied the wall.

  The ngvandi burst into the room. The stink of fish and rot filled the chamber. Their howls chilled Avery’s blood. He turned once, to see the brachial, nightmarish figures fall on the line of defenders. Janx fired his pistol point-blank into one’s face. Brain matter mushroomed out the back of its head. Byron ducked one creature’s claws, stabbed it in the gut, then slashed the throat of another. Muirblaag rammed his trident into the ribcage of an attacker, and it reeled back, knocking into another.

  Layanna’s amoeba form sw
elled still more. She lifted higher off the ground, her sac glowing brighter. Her limbs shot out.

  The ngvandi screamed as her tentacles and flagella wrapped around them, crushed them, stung them, shoved them inside her sac wall. Others fell back and dropped to their knees, seeming to pray.

  Avery returned his attention to the wall. His fingers felt, probed, explored. There! A sconce. Perhaps the sconce. Some versions held that it was twisting the torch which opened the door. The torch was long gone, but Avery played with the niche, his fingers probing. Nothing happened. Others held that a stone near the floor beneath the sconce did the trick. Avery tried it.

  Byron screamed behind him. Janx cursed.

  Shit. Avery shouldn’t be wasting time with this. He should be helping the others.

  Still, he had to try out one more version. This one held that by depressing a stone to either side of the sconce ...

  Nothing.

  Muirblaag hollered behind him.

  Avery started to turn back. No, he thought. Just one more. Some versions held that it wasn’t the stone immediately to the left and right but top and bottom—

  He shoved. Something ... gave. He pressed the stones even harder. The mechanism was ancient, rusty and reluctant. With all his strength, he shoved, one hand on one panel, one on the other.

  Shouts and echoes behind him.

  With a groan, a panel in the wall swung open. Avery stared at it, astonished. The opening was smaller than he would have imagined, no more than four feet by four, and it was dusty and cold, spanned by spider webs, but—

  “Come on!” he shouted over the sounds of battle. “This way!”

  One by one, the others noticed what he was gesturing them to do. Shocked, Janx, who had fired his last shot, smashed one more ngvandi over the head with his pistol and loped toward Avery. Muirblaag and Byron followed.

  Laughing somewhat hysterically, Avery scooped up a lantern and motioned for them to enter the opening. Byron went first, Muirblaag second, then Janx. Both had to stoop and squeeze to fit. Layanna, swollen and monstrous, held off the advancing ngvandi.